The Other Chinese Women

By

Lee Lawrence

Oct. 21, 2013 3:45 p.m. ET

Beauty Revealed: Images of Women in Qing Dynasty Chinese Painting

Berkeley Art Museum Through Dec. 22

Berkeley, Calif.

Subversion is afoot in "Beauty Revealed: Images of Women in Qing Dynasty Chinese Painting." Behind a straightforward title, unpretentious size—fewer than 30 mostly 18th-century works, if you count 12 album folios as a single item—and a seemingly innocuous subject lies an attempt to change our approach to the study of Chinese art.

ENLARGE

'Eight Beauties on the Balcony of a Brothel' (1736).
Private Collection

In one hanging scroll, a woman takes a break from embroidering as her servant serves her tea. In another, a woman lounges on a daybed while, elsewhere, ladies loiter in gardens, read love poems or prepare, seminude, to bathe. In the context of Chinese painting these are shockingly private moments brought to us mostly in large hanging scrolls about 41/2 to 51/2 feet tall. A handful reach 7 feet and more, some probably made for public places.

As a result, we feel but a breath away from the woman at the window absently petting a cat, or the very elegant "Woman Resting From Reading" on a rootwood couch, as fragile looking as the white-and-blue silks that flow down her body. A few of the women float against neutral backgrounds, but most inhabit recognizable spaces. Behind the woman at her embroidery table, for example, a curtain is tied back to reveal a bed chamber. And here and there an arm protrudes, trompe l'oeil style, in an 11-foot-long painting of women standing on a balcony.

"These paintings," says
Chen Fongfong,
a doctoral candidate at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and currently a fellow at Berkeley, "are not considered as something treasured or deserving of study by the scholars." Her tone indicates she expects to get some flack back home for trying to change this by assisting
Julia M. White,
senior curator for Asian art, in organizing the show and catalog.

This is because, in the Chinese hierarchy of painting, scholar-artists rank highest, prized for learned allusions and expressive brushwork. Then come court painters specializing in formal portraits and scenes of court life, along with professionals working in urban studios, producing paintings of flowers, celebratory themes and, way off the radar screen of scholars, the subject of this show: beautiful, desirable women.

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'Woman in a Brothel Being Presented to a Client' (late 18th century)
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum

Interestingly, many include references to the erudite world of scholar-artists—brushes and inkstones for calligraphy, books and ceramics, even the occasional ink landscape with calligraphy. But the artists depicted these hallmarks using an illusionistic style that scholars derided. Moreover, the paintings often exude melancholy and longing. In one, a woman in beautifully patterned silks gazes sadly into a pond where fish swim freely, a metaphor for a couple's sexual life. This is a reminder that in 17th- and 18th-century China officials and merchants commonly left home for long periods on business. It also points to a time when romantic ideals enjoyed great popularity, mostly among the urban merchant class but also among some at court.

Hence the depictions of women reading love poetry, primping, daydreaming and, in many cases, declaring themselves ready for company through a variety of visual codes. These can involve the strategic placement of fans, the selection of particular fruits and flowers, the woman's posture and exposure of tiny, bound feet in bright-red slippers. Perhaps even the recurrence of eye-catching red tassels and ribbons. The décor in "Woman in a Brothel Being Presented to a Client," for example, speaks of her education and refined tastes, but the multilayered open sleeves facing the viewer announce that, like the Japanese geisha, she will not only provide artful conversation but also grant intimate access.

Leading the charge to consider such paintings worthy of attention is
James Cahill,
an eminent scholar of Chinese art history and the impetus behind the show. Indeed, while it is crucial to understand how a culture values its works, it seems equally valuable to get a fuller picture of the artistic production of a time and place. The paintings, for example, illustrate how some artists drew from European prints, adopting shading for verisimilitude and using illusionistic techniques of perspective to communicate in code. As Mr. Cahill argues in his 2010 book, "Pictures for Use and Pleasure: Vernacular Painting in High Qing China," the ability to draw the eye back in space to a woman's private rooms underscores her availability.

These works also contain a wealth of information about the fashions women favored, the private and public spaces where the paintings were displayed, and the changing role of women. "Lady Writing a Letter," as Ms. White notes, stands out in this regard. The bound feet and loose sleeves might telegraph sex, but here the woman is engaged in her literary task, not adrift in daydream. Brush in hand, she studies what she has written, making us read her sleeves both as signaling availability and being rolled up for work. Ms. White speculates the painting reflects a change in late-18th- to early-19th-century China, a time when educated wives began to claim the role of soul mate to their husbands, a role previously confined to courtesans.

Mr. Cahill has documented a large number of "beautiful-woman paintings," or meirenhua, ranging in tone from cool to hot. This show wisely cuts the selection off at warm, lest prurient fascination derail attention from its message: That it is time to take off the blinders that prevent us from studying works not valued in the Chinese hierarchy of painting.

It is funny, but these were probably the "playboy" pictorials of the day...in China.

I can just see Chinese scholars hundreds of years form now, hanging 3 page fold outs of American nude women for an art gallery of traditional 2-D Photography of American women of the Twentieth Century...

And there will be an American Women Phd there, that will say that, "This is not typical of American Women of the Period."

...and she would be right, but no one will stop to look at Hilary in the next room...the memory would be too terrible...

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